For many years businesses have been attempting to reduce their operating costs and their labor costs by automating and thereby eliminating repetitious manual tasks. The business function of displaying information is no exception. There is a high potential cost savings in labor and material associated with eliminating the need to have personnel go to each display location and manually change the displays.
In situations where there are multiple information display means coupled with a frequent need to change the information being displayed, there is a potential to save a tremendous amount of money if the automation means is relatively inexpensive, low maintenance and greatly reduces the labor and material costs.
Those existing automated information display systems which have some capacity to display and control information on multiple information display units are not sufficiently reliable and do not have sufficient versatility for different applications. Further, the existing information display systems do not adequately reduce the labor and material costs associated with changing the displayed information or verifying the accuracy thereof.
Most automated information display systems currently used in retail stores for displaying price and related information for example, are only capable of displaying information in one format on multiple identical displays.
Further, information display systems currently utilized do not have a sufficient error detection means to verify the proper information is being displayed at the proper location. The identification and correction of errors in those systems generally must be accomplished by visual observation of the display units.
Because of the problems experienced to date with retail store information display systems, most retail stores, for example, continue to utilize single-use displays, which require store personnel walk the aisles and manually change the plastic or paper displays to reflect sales, price changes, product relocations and the like.
In these retail stores, each item of goods contains a Uniform Product Code ("UPC") bar code. The computer-based cash register utilizes an infrared or other type of scanner to read the Uniform Product Code on the product and convert the bar code for that product to a price.
The stores utilizing the forenamed displays will save the labor costs of individually marking the price on each item, but will experience additional material costs related to the price labels and will still experience the high labor costs associated with manually changing the price labels on the shelves every time a change is required. The stores will also continue to incur the unnecessary expenses related to having erroneous prices on the displays and the labor expense related to visually observing the displays to verify the correct prices are on the shelves adjacent to the correct goods.
In developing an information or price display system with electronic information display means which eliminates the forenamed problems, it is important that the display units be fast, reliable, virtually error-free, only contain prices consistent with the prices stored in the store's price database, require low maintenance and must be versatile to enable it to accomplish different combinations of displays and information. Prior art has heretofore been unable to sufficiently accomplish this.
In order for the cost savings to give the user a reasonable economic benefit or financial return, the initial purchase expense and the operational and maintenance expenses for the system must also be minimized. One means to best minimize costs is to minimize the number of complex and/or intelligent components. Prior art has heretofore been unable to sufficiently minimize either the initial purchase expense or the expenses associated with sustained operation and maintenance of the system. Our invention has achieved a relatively inexpensive and reliable information display system by utilizing relatively few complex and/or intelligent components and an automatic internal error detection means.
Prior attempts have heretofore been unable to develop a versatile information display system which sufficiently reduces or eliminates the high cost of the manual price changes/updates and product relocations reliably, efficiently and with a sufficient error detection and alarm system.
Our invention has greatly reduced or eliminated the shortcomings associated with prior attempts to automate the information display systems by providing a relatively fast, reliable, economical information display system which reduces the operational, maintenance and labor expenses to a much higher extent than prior art and the industry have thus far been able to achieve.
Our invention has achieved a relatively fast information display system by utilizing an addressing means which more efficiently transmits the information to the information display means and which displays the information in real time.
Our invention has greatly reduced the operational, maintenance and labor expenses by eliminating the need to go to the information display means to make most changes by allowing all changes to be made by one system operator from a central location. Our invention further reduces the maintenance requirements by utilizing less complex and non-intelligent display units which are powered from centralized standard power sources. The individual display means do not have to be individually programmed at the display location nor do they require a battery for their power source, which would also require periodic manual replacement.
Our invention is distinguished from prior art individually or any combination thereof by providing an apparatus and method which eliminates the problems relating to all prior art as discussed more fully herein.